AnIndefiniteArticle

This isn’t “I want to believe”, this is “it would be irresponsible to not consider”.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 3rd, 2023

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  • I wonder if Trump will scapegoat Elon for this and fire him before taking office to prove that he works alone.

    Firing Elon would deflate Musk’s stocks and net worth, maybe even knock him off the richest man slot. A lot of that wealth is speculative gains priced into the market under the assumption that Musk will be very influential in Trump 47, and that he will use that position to benefit his businesses.

    Trump wants to send the message that he, as president of the united states, has the power to dethrone the world’s richest man with a simple “you’re fired”. Trump wants to make sure that the world knows that he rules alone, and that he has more power than money can buy.

    Trump doesn’t need to get reelected again. He doesn’t need Elon manipulating the twitter algo anymore. Donny already won and got everything he wanted from Elon (assumption). Why should he keep playing with Musk if he’s just going to keep getting tied up in all this stupid drama?

    Seems very Trump-like to knock him down a peg for his hubris and let him come crawling back in a year or two. I think most of the world agrees that someone needs to do something about Musk’s ego. It would probably give him a popularity boost to start his new term.

    disclaimer: this is a prediction, not a recommendation or an approval of these tactics.


  • And even after they actually hurt you! Cops don’t care about protecting plebs - there’s no money in that.

    Sexual violence and misconduct are rampant in our society. The police protect the perpetrators of these crimes as much as they protect the wealthy targeted by justified vigilantes. Those who fight back against injustice perpetrated by the wealthy and powerful get harassed by the cops. The role of the police is to stop those getting screwed over by a corrupt system of gender/racial/class hierarchies from exposing their mistreatment or negotiating for more equitable arrangements.

    Our system supports those who commit sex/war crimes and punishes those who dare to be victims or who speak out about these injustices.

    And then the wealthy act surprised when the victims of sex crimes seeking justice start agitating against overmilitarization and calling for the abolition of policing. Those who are ostracized and forbidden from joining elite society are bound to find common ground with each other and unify against the tyranny we all face.












  • Transphobic? Sure. Absolutely. As an intersex person who grew up in a very conservative part of Florida, no one batted an eye when I played for both boys and girls ice hockey teams during high school back in the Obama administration. Propaganda during the Trump administration suddenly made this an issue. I know for a fact that no one cared before the Republicans decided to divide us on this issue. People like Tulsi pushing it out like assholes is absolutely part of that. My teenage years were very difficult as an intersex person in the town where the “don’t say gay” law came from. Sports, and hockey specifically, was my reprieve from that discrimination. I very much don’t respect her stance on this issue, or any republican who pushes such divisive and dangerous rhetoric.

    The “present” vote for impeachment? Well, I remember also being upset with the impeachment process for not prosecuting Trump for his larger and more obvious crimes. I would love to see Biden/Trump/Obama/Bush all tried for their war crimes, crimes in immigrant detention centers, gitmo/torture, Syria/Yemen/Iraq/Afghanistan/Libya/Palestine etc. Trump could have been the precedent setter for holding presidents accountable. The impeachment process instead felt like a political sham. I understand and respect that she believes Trump is “guilty of wrongdoing,” but that she had serious concerns about the process itself, calling it “a partisan process, fueled by tribal animosities that have so gravely divided our country.”

    I think that calling her americanized/new-age hinduism a cult is racist and uncalled for. I’d trust someone who worships the trimurti over someone who worships yahweh in most situations related to morality. All religions are cults.

    When she visited Syria and tried to use words instead of bombs to communicate with the Assad regime, the US had been engaged as a belligerent in the Syrian civil war for five years, and Trump had just been elected and was actively amplifying the conflict.. As a Major in the US Army, a Congressperson, and a strong advocate for peace, her going to the enemy to talk and promote diplomatic solutions over Trump’s bombing campaigns is very much in line with her stated perspective as a peace-seeking combat medic. I watched her statements on this closely at the time, but did not see her defend Assad, just deflect questions about his conduct by pointing out that war is hell and pointing to similar misconduct in the area perpetuated by Trump/Obama/Bush.

    I understand that you are a “boot-licking apologist” who has a “boner” for war criminals and hates those who call them out. You should really reassess your blind obedience to power. I think that her discretion and pro-peace positions are a boon to our country’s foreign intelligence operations. I believe that in spite of the joys from my childhood that Gabbard’s transphobia makes her attack.

    Although I strongly disagree with this person’s social views, her foreign policy appears to be an imperfect step in the right direction. I hope her actions as DNI will continue in this manner. I recognize that as DNI, she will have access to intelligence on Americans that makes me worry about her social views. I don’t think that concern will go away if Trump nominates literally anyone else from his side. Tulsi has always been more focused on foreign policy than domestic policy, and I hope that trend continues in her new role.

    I’m also open to updating my view on her, but I need real evidence of her being a “traitor” before I can do that. All I see are claims backed up by shaky evidence that falls apart when you actually look into the details of the situation. I plan to pay attention to her confirmation hearings. Maybe something damning but classified will come out for the public. I suspect this won’t happen, because if damning evidence existed then I believe that the existing intelligence regime would make sure everyone knows about it in retaliation for her not snapping into line.

    To be clear, my view of this person can be summed up as “a bit of an asshole on social issues, but a step away from warmongering attitudes in our foreign policy”. I’m apprehensive about her new position allowing her to implement the former. I’m hopeful that her new position leads to positive outcomes such as scaling back our wasteful war machine as she implements the latter.


  • Well, the Ramjet collects protons in-situ while flying through the interstellar medium for use as fusion fuel.

    Putting aside that fusion rocketry is very different from combustion rocketry, even the solar wind isn’t dense enough for that, which is the medium in question for interplanetary travel.

    At 1AU, solar wind has ~1 proton per cubic centimeter, moving at about 500 km/s, per current readings at time of writing. That’s 1e6 protons per cubic meter, and a flux of 5e11 protons per second passing through each square meter.

    Now let’s move in to Mercury at ~0.38 AU (+/-eccentricity). Mercury receives on average ~10x the flux of particles assuming 1/r^2. Suppose we make a ship with a collector for solar wind the size of Mercury, with a radius of ~2.5e6 m. Our ship then collects 2e13 square meters of flux, or ~1e26 protons per second. A proton is ~1e-27 kg, so that’s almost 10% of a kg per second to power our now dwarf-planet-sized collector infrastructure.

    Oh, you wanted an engine? Good luck having anything leftover. You can’t collect the solar wind and use it in real time. But wait an Earth year, and now your collector has collected a million kg, which is about enough to fuel a single one of these. Looks to me like all stages and boosters here burn H2, from what I’m reading. This seems like the appropriate place to say TIL about Saturn V stage 1. Thanks.

    Collection at background solar wind levels is not possible. The time to go proton fishing is during a CME. A single CME ejects billions of tons of protons, per NASA’s space weather prediction center’s page explaining them. A billion tons is a trillion kg, and enough to launch a million of those Delta IV Heavies from a single flare event.

    I understand that “catching a solar flare” may be easier said than done.


  • She can verify an airstrike using US govt tools as a member of the US Army. Under these conditions I think it reasonable to double check with an outside source.

    I know that children may not have the sophisticated tools to identify who owns the planes, but they have verbal and community knowledge about the conflict which is a hard perspective for an American to access without asking them directly.

    She may have feigned ignorance to get them to open up. She may have asked about ISIS to prompt them to tell her any information about ISIS attacks that they might have heard. Maybe Assad lied to her and told her it was ISIS, and she was verifying that he was lying and that the US Army info was correct by running the question past the people in his line of fire who might know best. I don’t know why Tulsi asked this question, but the situation has enough ambiguity and such little detail that it’s not a good argument for her being a traitor.

    I’m interested to see any concrete evidence you may have, including better context on this specific incident.




  • Reading this article and others, I don’t see a valid argument for her being disloyal or a Russian asset. The examples given in the article all sound like justifiable if alternative perspectives.

    I don’t agree with her on issues like her uncritical support for Israel or how she talks about humans whose lives and homes have been destroyed by our empire until they become terrorists. Here, she shares the views of the intelligence establishment, and is no worse than other candidates for DNI.

    I do like the image of the army medic arguing for talk and negotiation as opposed to a militarized response. I think that Intelligence Community status quo has us set on a course for WWIII. I hope that Tulsi’s anti-interventionism, support for whistleblowers like Snowden and other truth seekers, and focus on communication/negotiation will help us reduce our need for arms so we can better direct those funds.

    Or, maybe standing down now is like appeasement before WWII. We’ve already voted, now we get to deal with the consequences while we try to rebuild a better America.



  • According to the NDS Commission, the Pentagon should have more than just a bigger budget. Departmental leadership should also have greater ability to advance weapon acquisition programs with more limited oversight. Indeed, NDS commissioners support efforts to replace the Pentagon’s current budgeting and acquisition system with one much less accountable to U.S. taxpayers, but far more accommodating to contractors.[17](javascript:void(0)) A looser budgeting and acquisition system would enable the Pentagon to funnel more money to military contractors, faster.

    Just hand it over to the private contractors as quickly and with as little oversight as possible!

    Looter tactics.